Muskoxen are Ice Age survivors adapted to extreme Arctic conditions. Climate change is altering their food sources and exposing them to new disease threats.
Wild muskox welfare is increasingly threatened by climate-driven icing events that lock forage under impenetrable ice sheets, causing mass starvation. Warmer temperatures are enabling parasites and pathogens previously limited by cold to establish in muskox populations. These welfare harms are population-scale and driven by global greenhouse gas emissions. Locally, disturbance from snowmobiles causes panicked group stampedes that can separate calves from mothers and cause exhaustion injuries.